“He’s given up,” someone whispered, but within moments, Adolf Hitler was standing on the ropes, and he was addressing the arena.
“My fellow Germans,” he called, “you can see something here tonight, can’t you?” Bare-chested, victory-eyed, he pointed over at Max. “You can see that what we face is something far more sinister and powerful than we ever imagined. Can you see that?”
They answered. “Yes, Führer.”
“Can you see that this enemy has found its ways—its despicable ways—through our armor, and that clearly, I cannot stand up here alone and fight him?” The words were visible. They dropped from his mouth like jewels. “Look at him! Take a good look.” They looked. At the bloodied Max Vandenburg. “As we speak, he is plotting his way into your neighborhood. He’s moving in next door. He’s infesting you with his family and he’s about to take you over. He—” Hitler glanced at him a moment, with disgust. “He will soon own you, until it is he who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back, smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you’ll be working for him at minimum wage while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets. Will you simply stand there and let him do this? Will you stand by as your leaders did in the past, when they gave your land to everybody else, when they sold your country for the price of a few signatures? Will you stand out there, powerless? Or”—and now he stepped one rung higher—“will you climb up into this ring with me?”
Max shook. Horror stuttered in his stomach.
Adolf finished him. “Will you climb in here so that we can defeat this enemy together?”
In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them—until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet …
He watched the next person climb through the ropes. It was a girl, and as she slowly crossed the canvas, he noticed a tear torn down her left cheek. In her right hand was a newspaper.
“The crossword,” she gently said, “is empty,” and she held it out to him.
Dark.
Nothing but dark now.
Just basement. Just Jew.
The New Dream: A Few Nights Later
It was afternoon. Liesel came down the basement steps. Max was halfway through his push-ups.
She watched awhile, without his knowledge, and when she came and sat with him, he stood up and leaned back against the wall. “Did I tell you,” he asked her, “that I’ve been having a new dream lately?”
Liesel shifted a little, to see his face.
“But I dream this when I’m awake.” He motioned to the glowless kerosene lamp. “Sometimes I turn out the light. Then I stand here and wait.”
“For what?”
Max corrected her. “Not for what. For whom.”
For a few moments, Liesel said nothing. It was one of those conversations that require some time to elapse between exchanges. “Who do you wait for?”
Max did not move. “The Führer.” He was very matter-of-fact about this. “That’s why I’m in training.”
“The push-ups?”
“That’s right.” He walked to the concrete stairway. “Every night, I wait in the dark and the Führer comes down these steps. He walks down and he and I, we fight for hours.”
Liesel was standing now. “Who wins?”
At first, he was going to answer that no one did, but then he noticed the paint cans, the drop sheets, and the growing pile of newspapers in the periphery of his vision. He watched the words, the long cloud, and the figures on the wall.
“I do,” he said.
It was as though he’d opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.
Under the ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It sounds like the beginning of a joke:
“There’s a Jew and a German standing in a basement, right? …”
This, however, was no joke.